Sanders introduces Medicare for All Act of 2017 (Text of the bill)

“This is a pivotal moment in American history,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in his NYT think piece yesterday. “Do we, as a nation, join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee comprehensive health care to every person as a human right? Or do we maintain a system that is enormously expensive, wasteful and bureaucratic, and is designed to maximize profits for big insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street and medical equipment suppliers?” In his Medicare for All: Leaving No One Behind proposal, Sanders states that

Americans need a health care system that works for patients and providers. We need to focus our federal investments on training the health care providers. We need to ensure a strong health care workforce in all communities now and in the future. We need to build on the strength of the 50 years of success of the Medicare program. We need a health care system that significantly reduces overhead, administrative costs and complexity. We need a system where all people can get the care they need to maintain and improve their health when they need it regardless of income, age or socioeconomic status. We need a system that works not just for millionaires and billionaires, but for all of us.

Yesterday, Sanders introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2017 [text]. “Under this legislation, every family in America would receive comprehensive coverage, and middle-class families would save thousands of dollars a year by eliminating their private insurance costs as we move to a publicly funded program,” wrote Sanders in his NYT think piece. “The transition to the Medicare for All program would take place over four years. In the first year, benefits to older people would be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and hearing aids, and the eligibility age for Medicare would be lowered to 55. All children under the age of 18 would also be covered. In the second year, the eligibility age would be lowered to 45 and in the third year to 35. By the fourth year, every man, woman and child in the country would be covered by Medicare for All. … Guaranteeing health care as a right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people want. According to an April poll by The Economist/YouGov, 60 percent of the American people want to ‘expand Medicare to provide health insurance to every American,’ including 75 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans.”

“To be clear: Sanders’ single payer plan has zero chance of passing through the Republican-controlled Senate. No GOP senator will vote for it and it’s not at all clear that many of the 10 Democrats up in 2018 in states that President Donald Trump won in 2016 will either,” predicted CNN’s Chris Cillizza in How Bernie Sanders is taking over the Democratic Party. WaPo’s David Weigel concurred. — JH

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